Tag Archives: Furniture

Wireless charging is being increasingly included in more and more devices, and it’s about time furniture manufacturers took advantage of this reality. So it’s with great pleasure that we find out about IKEA’s plans to do just that. They’ve endorsed the Qi Wireless Charging standard from the Wireless Power Consortium, and will be rolling out home furnishings with the functionality in the coming months. This means bedside tables, lamps and desks will have a special area on which you’ll be able to simply put down your phone and start charging. No more cables to plug in at night. Considering IKEA is the world’s largest furniture retailer, this move will likely put pressure to make wireless charging ubiquitous, and hopefully one day convince Apple to include it in its handsets, a move it should have made years ago. Of course when they do so, they’ll act as if they invented the thing and call it something different, but in the end it doesn’t matter: cables need to disappear.

“IKEA said the wireless charging home furnishings will be available in Europe and North America this April, followed by a global rollout.”

There’s another way to get dizzy when you’re at the bar, but it doesn’t involve knocking back more shots. Rather, all you need to do is push off the ground– that is, if you happen to be seated on one of the swings that serve as seats on this unusual bar. Instead of the usual stools, it has a number of swings surrounding it. You obviously can’t push off as hard as you like because you’ll probably end up banging your knees (while damaging the bar in the process.)

It’s being sold by Duffy London and comes with a pretty hefty pricetag: $37,465.

Oh, this would make Kramer proud. The Bookniture is a 13 inch coffee table “book” that unfolds into a fully functioning piece of furniture… which you can then use as a coffee table! The sturdy honeycomb structure is capable of supporting up to 375 pounds, and can serve as the aforementioned coffee table, or as a stool, a footrest, or anything else you can think of doing with a 13 inch tall cylinder. When you’re done, just close the “book” and you’re ready to go. It comes with its own felt top in various colors, and you’ll have to pledge $70 to get yours, with a delivery in May of this year.

You’re looking at an 18 inch Nintendo cube, made from MDF, which is basically compressed sawdust. It’s denser than plywood and should weigh quite a bit. It’s for those of you wanting to adorn your living space in a way that clearly declares your love for Japan’s more whimsical gaming company. You’ll have to buy the glass top separately, but at $125, it’s a cool way to decorate your dorm room or bachelor pad… maybe not so much your family home. But hey, maybe your SO is chill like that.

Before we go, just know that this is a cool chair by Duffy London that can be used in two positions, depending on which side you want it to stand up on. It’s handmade in London with “wood from Forest Stewardship Council managed forests and other controlled sources.” And it costs £1,500, which is about $2,346USD.

When you’ve got a kid, you’ll quickly realize that your once-spacious apartment is too small for comfort. A crib there, a playmat there, a high chair in the corner… If moving to a bigger place isn’t an option, then you might want to go for modular furniture like Step Up. It starts out as a high chair, but you can easily transform it into a step stool when you need one and a slide when it’s time for playtime.

A piece of art or furniture? The Hockenheimer Magazine Stool is neither one, because it’s actually a combination of both. It’s basically a DIY kit that for you to make your own stool. It comes with a four-legged waxed birch stool base and two leather belts, plus a cushion so your tush is comfy when you take a seat on it. What sets it apart is because of what goes in between the cushion and the base of the stool: stacks of your old magazines and newspapers that you otherwise have no other use for.

Anyone who’s ever bought anything from IKEA knows the joys of fiddling around with L-shaped Hex keys and screwdrivers for assembly. Much as we grumble about the process, this tool-assisted assembly process is what makes the items sturdy and keeps their cost down. But Israeli industrial designer Ruthy Shafrir wants to take things a step further and altogether remove the need for any tools in the assembly process of her hive-like shelf unit, called Ruche. It’s made from either aluminum or cardboard sheets that slot into one another, and offers surprising sturdiness given the lack of any structural fasteners. The cardboard version can support up to “10 kg (22 lb) for the small 15.5 in (34.5 cm) high version, to 64 kg (142 lb) for the large (39.4 in (100 cm)). In the sturdier aluminum model, the small version can bear 18 kg (39.6 lb) and the large 80 kg (176 lb).” That’s a lot for something that can allegedly be assembled in around 6 minutes.

Currently on Kickstarter, pledges start at $30 and go up to $180 for the large aluminum Ruche.

Thats a sick looking chair if we’ve ever seen one. Made by painter, sculptor, and woodcarver Vyacheslav Pakhomov. If the translation on his website is correct, it does seem to be available for purchase for the relatively modest sum of 230000 Russian Rubles, which translates to about $5,730 USD. Considering the amount of work that must’ve gone into something like this, evil hell Lords in the making should immediately go check if they have the available funds before it’s sold.

OhGizmo! is a frequently updated blog that focuses on covering items that will appeal to a very specific and often very passionate audience: the geek. Aside from the fare of innovative consumer electronic products, the reader can expect to find news about geek culture, absurd inventions, awe inspiring technology, and an ever growing assortment of articles that we like to think fit within our view of what we’re calling the Geek Lifestyle.